Adam Levine, the lead singer in Maroon 5 and the man whose tummy tattoo was mocked around the world, believes “there aren’t any bands anymore”. As Stereogum points out, Levine lamented the alleged disappearance of music groups during an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, saying, “There’s no bands anymore, and I feel like they’re a dying breed.”
Levine stopped by Lowe’s show to promote “Beautiful Mistakes”, his new song with Megan Thee Stallion. The two started talking about modern pop music and the extent to which solo artists are currently dominating that world. That’s when Levine got nostalgic for the music of the early 2000s and seemed to forget there’s dozens of phenomenal bands from the past decade crushing it right now.
“You look back at that stuff and, it’s funny, I’ve been showing my kid music videos, my little girl,” said Levine. “And it’s funny how you go back and re-watch like these old videos, and listen to these old songs, and I’ve been playing her a lot of Avril Lavigne records. Like, dude, ‘I’m With You’ is like — it’s, yeah, that gives you tears. It’s crazy, because you don’t remember it in the same way, because you took it for granted, because it was like when you were growing up, and it was just part of what you had on the radio. But there’s some really great songs that I didn’t understand how good they were back then.”
“It’s funny, when the first Maroon 5 album came out there were still other bands. I feel like there aren’t any bands anymore, you know?” he continued. “That’s the thing that makes me kind of sad, is that there were just bands. There’s no bands anymore, and I feel like they’re a dying breed. And so I kind of, in a weird way, as far as… I mean, there still are plenty of bands, and maybe they’re not in the limelight quite as much, or in the pop limelight, but I wish there could be more of those around.”
Editors’ Picks
Are Maroon 5 the ideal model of a successful band? Maybe for radio pop music. However, it’s worth noting that their lineup has changed so much since forming in 1994 that they have an entire Wikipedia page devoted to tracking who’s involved each year. The most recent member to part ways was Mickey Madden, who took a “leave of absence” in 2020 after being arrested for domestic violence and inflicting a “traumatic” injury on his partner.
